To my friends cast out.
“Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.”
William Butler Yeats
“To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing” (ll. 13-16)
Were I the poet worthy
to carry the sandals
of William Butler Yeats
or even fit to kneel down,
undo his sandal straps,
I would excoriate the air
with words cleaving stone–
that brazen smile,
that heart the potter’s field.
And God said,
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
And Jesus said,
“Be compassionate as your Father
is compassionate. Do not judge,
and you will not be judged yourselves;
do not condemn, and you will not
be condemned yourselves;
grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. . . .
because the amount you measure out
is the amount you will be given back.”
So I am rightly judged, my grief
a wailing wall bullet pocked.
I wave forgiveness.
* William Butler Yeats. “To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing.” The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, The Macmillan Company, Eighteenth Printing, 1972, p. 107; First Edition, 1933.
Psalm 46:10 (KJV)
Luke 6: 36-38 (The Jerusalem Bible)
A Thin Silence 